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 Maarten Maartensz:    Philosophical Dictionary | Filosofisch Woordenboek                      

 C - Contradiction

 

Contradiction: Conjunction of a statement and its denial.

A contradiction in logic is never true, and thus deriving a contradiction from a set of statements shows one or more statements in the set are not true. See reductio ad absurdum.

Note this is a linguistic notion. Hegel and his followers (Marx, Lenin) introduced a lot of obscurity, nonsense, and indeed contradiction in their philosophy by claiming that there really are contradictions in reality. At best, this confuses oppositions and contradictions.

 

See also: Logic

Literature:

Bochenski, Cartwright, Carnap.
 

 Original: Aug 18, 2004                                                Last edited: 12 December 2011.   Top